The Panama Uplift and the Closing of the Central American Seaway – Part II

Continued from the last post regarding additional information and effect of the uplift of the Isthmus of Panama and the closing of the Panama Seaway to see the reality of this event, as well as that of other effects of land mass uplift in South America.

Underwater volcanoes lifted to eventually form islands above the surface, which raising lands filled with sediment creating the isthmus now known as Panama

As stated in the last post, the shallowing and eventual closure of the Panama “gateway” and creation of the Isthmus of Panama, where both continents become connected by land, strengthened the “Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation,” a current that transports warm equatorial waters north and is responsible for Europe’s mild winters, and plays a crucial role in the shaping of our modern climate system. This uplift occurred when the sea floor was lifted up in volcanoes created from the tectonic plates colliding and the Andean Plate over riding the Nazca plate, forcing the latter downward.
    This was first suggested in 1910 by North American paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, the American paleontologist and geologist, and president of the American Museum of Natural, who based his proposal on the fossil record of mammals in Central America (Osborn, The Age of Mammals in Europe, Asia and North America, Macmillan Co., New York, 1910, p80. This conclusion then provided a foundation for Alfred Wegener who proposed the theory of continental drift in 1912 (Wegener, “The Origins of Continents,” Milestones in Geosciences, Journal of Earth Science, vol.9, S4-S17.”
    What is now Panama lies on the boundaries of the South and North American, Caribbean and Cocos plates, and collisions between these huge masses led to rises in the seafloor and the formation of underwater volcanoes, which eventually emerged above the water line (Christine D. Bacon, et. al., “Biological evidence supports an early and complex emergence of the Isthmus of Panama,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, vol.112, no.19, May 12, 2015, pp6110-6115). As these volcanoes rose and grew in size, the sea became shallow enough that deep water exchange between the Pacific and Atlantic ceased, leading to a reorganization of oceanic currents.
    In fact, Cornelia Class, a geochemist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and Esteban Gazel, a Lamont adjunct researcher now based at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, are looking into one of the most mysterious forces at work on the natural construction site of the Galápagos Plume, a long-lived hot upwelling of material from the deep earth that melts near the surface and has formed strings of volcanoes, both underwater and as ocean islands. Geologists believe that anciently, this Plume rested below Central America, and has since migrated beneath the Galápagos.
    Coming from earth's mantle, dozens of miles down, the still-active plume is similar to hotspots of magma that percolate under Hawaii and Yellowstone. It is believed to have started with huge outpourings of lava under what is now the Caribbean, but due mainly to the movement of tectonic plates above, has since migrated some 600 miles south and west into the Pacific.
    In trying to unravel Earth’s history from the rocks, which normally are buried far below the surface or lie deep on the ocean floor, here sit on more or less dry land, offering an unusual window into the processes of the deep earth (Kevin Krajick, “The Isthmus of Panama: Out of the Deep Earth,” The Earth Institute, Columbia University, April 1, 2014).
    In fall 2012, Class and Gazel hunted for rocks created by the plume on Panama's Azuero peninsula, which juts into the Pacific Ocean.
    It is along the coast, with its constant tectonic uplift and violent erosion, where rocks are most exposed. But with lack of roads and other obstacles, few sites are accessible by land. This wind-torn islet was reachable at low tide after a hike through the woods. It was volcanic in origin, and the rocks in this part of Panama are a complicated mélange, representing the complex history of the isthmus.

Left: Picrite; Right: Olivine

From their heavily weathered exteriors, it is hard to tell one kind of rock from another until they are broken, looking the tiny crystals of Picrite—a type of igneous rock that crystallizes as magma from the mantle heads upward. Generally formed on the seafloor, Picrite contains sparkly yellowish-green crystals of Olivine, a typical mantle-derived mineral not seen in rocks formed nearer the surface.
    From these, the history of the Panama Isthmus is slowly unravelling. While scientists have known of these events and the rising of Panama and the forming of the isthmus, cutting off the seaway between North and South America, they have unfortunately automatically bought into and promoted the view that this happened millions of years ago. However, since we know this world was not formed millions of years ago, then the point of all of this is to show the time frame in its more accurate era—one which agrees with the Biblical times provided by the Lord as He dictated them to Moses, which is not a popular idea among elitist, scientists, and people who accept their views.
    This is a very difficult thing for people to do whose entire life has been inculcated with an understanding that the world is billions of years old. However, since we have been assured by the Lord that it is not anywhere near that age, we need to realize how old it is so that we can then place events, factual or speculated upon, as to when they fit within the accurate age limits.

A fossilized tree leaf found by paleontologists during a project to recover fossils during the Panama Canal expansion, is displayed in Panama City, April 26, 2013 

Recently, during a new expansion of the Panama Canal in 2007, when an eight-year construction effort to expand the canal took place, with the removal of sediment from the canal, numerous new outcrops were exposed, providing an unparalleled opportunity for additional studies on the timing and dynamics of the Isthmus formation. During this time 20-million-year-old fossilized trees were discovered, and immediately the scientists involved decided that this showed the isthmus creation was 20 million years old—but since that did not jive with their view of the isthmus forming about 3 million years ago, they decided that there must have been an earlier closing isthmus, then a reopening of it, and then a final closing.
    In fact, in the 1970s, high-resolution paleoceanographic data available from deep-sea cores began to show that an isthmus, that is “a narrow portion of land, enclosed on each side by water, and connecting two larger bodies of land,” was in place only relatively recently, around 3 million years ago” (Lloyd D. Keigwin, Jr., “Pliocene closing of the Isthmus of Panama, based on biostratigraphic evidence from nearby Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea cores,” Geology Journal, Geological Society of America,  Boulder Colorado, vol.6, 1978, pp.630–634). In addition, it is believed that the Pliocene Epoch existed as recently as 2.58 million years ago—and in Biblical time, that would be quite recent, perhaps even comparable to the time of the crucifixion and the tumult and destruction described in 3 Nephi.
    You see, nobody was around 20 million years ago, and no diagrams or history of a closure exists or could possibly be known, yet scientists still speculate and hypothesize on what the finding meant. The problem is, they never look beyond their firm, fixed belief that the world is billions of years old, therefore, the only meaning that could be attached to the fossilized trees is that they had grown where they were found and then later were drowned and fossilized there as the sea bed rose and fell through the next 15-17 million years.

Matter Unorganized

However, other explanations are possible—such as the fossils came from another extinct world; they were part of the matter unorganized used to form this world; they were destroyed not by the sinking of an earlier isthmus but by a devastating Flood, or through some other means; the dating is inaccurate, etc. Without any intention of looking further, the chances of finding what that truly meant may never be discovered and known.
    The formation of the Isthmus of Panama stands as one of the greatest natural events of geologic history, driving profound biotic transformations on land and in the oceans (Aaron O’Dea, et.al., “Formation of the Isthmus of Panama,” U.S. Geological Society, Science Advances, vol.2, no.8, American Association for the Advancement of Sciences Publishers, Washington DC, 17 August 2016).
    Note that this discovery has been widely heralded as a new set of data that “has revised our understanding of the rise of the Isthmus and its consequences,” but no thought that more than a revision, such as a brand new understanding, is ever considered. The point is, however, that the Isthmus now seen connecting North and South America, only occurred in recent history. The same is true of other areas where the Amazon Basin lifted up above the surface and the ocean was pushed back—all at the time of the crucifixion as described in 3 Nephi, not a popular belief among scientists, but nevertheless and certain answer for the many unanswered questions of the Earth’s history.
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